Name: Jason Sanford
Twitter: https://twitter.com/jasonsanford
Blog: https://www.jasonsanford.com/blog
Patreon (Genre Grapevine): https://www.patreon.com/jasonsanford
Pronouns: He/him
Jason Sanford is a fan journalist, reviewer and award-nominated novelist. He is having a busy year with two different streams of his work being recognised in 2022: he was a Nebula Award & Philip K Dick Award finalist for Best Novel with The Plague Birds and he is a Hugo Award Finalist for Best Fan writer.
As well as being a published fiction writer, Sanford is a prolific fan writer with an active interest in news and invents within fandom and genre publishing. Although he and I take different approaches and have some different areas of interest in fannish news, when our areas overlap I've always been impressed by Sanford's attention to detail and veracity. His regular Genre Grapevine (available via his Patreon) is a key source of industry news and events within the crazy turmoil of science fiction.
Most notably in 2021 was his detailed coverage of the level of extremism in some sections of the venerable Baen Books forum known as Baen's Bar.
"For example, as reported earlier by File770, author Tom Kratman has used the forum to urge Trump to "start his own well-armed militia." Kratman added that Trump should say "I can start the civil war with a stamp of my foot. I've refrained, so far, but you cannot count on that restraint under all circumstances.""
https://www.patreon.com/posts/baen-books-forum-47582408
Sanford's report would receive heavy criticism, some of it reasonable in tone (if not in substance) but much of it in the form of harassment and demonisation — harassment that ironically served to demonstrate the degree to which the toxicity surrounding some elements of Baen's Bar had reached dangerous levels.
What's in the packet
Not surprisingly, Sanford's Baen's Bar story is featured in his Hugo Packet but he also includes a wider range of his writing. Featured is his essay on creativity that touches on his own personal experiences as a writer as well as his background in archaeology.
"For example, humans created Acheulean stone hand tools with relatively few changes for well over a million years. It's almost impossible to imagine that time span in our current cultural context, where we believe a city like London is old because it's existed for over 2,000 years. Yet it would take 500 times the history of London to equal how long humans crafted Acheulean stone tools. A million years of humans teaching each other to craft these tools, passing on their knowledge of this act of creation, being inspired to use different types of stones to create the tools, and modifying the tools as needed.
Each of these tools resulted from an act of individual creation. Each of them were similar yet also different.
Sometimes creativity brings forth something surprisingly new. Other times it results in something similar to what has already been created."
No One Creates Alone, Jason Sanford Hugo Packet, also: https://www.patreon.com/posts/no-one-creates-54881143
It is an excellent essay that also weaves in a review of the manga Look Back by Tatsuki Fujimoto. I think it is a prime example of why we need a better range of awards/celebrations of non-ficition writing within SF&F (not necessarily a new Hugo category).
As well as specific essays, Sanford includes several more general examples of his Genre Grapevine news round-up columns. A very different style of fanwriting but a key element of fan writing as a form.
Why you should vote for Jason Sanford
Fan Writing can be seen as views, news, and reviews and Jason Sanford covers each of those. He's an active part of virtual fandom, engaged with the ups-and-downs of SF&F publishing both as an observer and as a writer. He has a keen critical eye and forensic interest in what is going on, as well as having a talented way with putting words together.
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